Even for a grizzled CIA veteran like me, now retired after serving as an agency lawyer for 34 turbulent years, the recent public explosion of accusations and vitriol between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee is both striking and confounding. At the center of the war of words between CIA Director John Brennan and Chairman Dianne Feinstein is the committee's long-completed but, as yet, still classified and unreleased report on the history of the CIA's controversial terrorist interrogation program conducted during the Bush administration.

Everyone should take a deep breath. I don't see any crimes here by either side, nor is this a constitutional crisis. Behind the melodrama, this is a food fight over document access between the CIA and its congressional overseers. I saw, and participated in, many in my career, which included service as the agency's chief lawyer in the first seven years of the post-9/11 era. Virtually all of them were settled behind the scenes. For the life of me, I can't fathom why this one has turned into such a spectacle.

Big bills

The Senate report should be declassified and released pronto. By all public accounts, it is eye-popping in its 6,300 page length and its $50 million cost. It is also said to be scathing in its criticism of the interrogation program and the people at the CIA who conceived and implemented it. Presumably, that includes me because I was its chief legal architect at the agency. So be it. Let it out, along with the CIA's 122-page rebuttal, which is said to be unsparing in its criticism of the report's analysis, conclusions and methodology. Americans deserve to see all of it and make their own judgments.

At the same time, caveat emptor. The committee report is exclusively a product of its Democratic majority members; the panel's Republicans bowed out years ago, arguing (correctly, in my view) that it was bound to be a full-throated attack on the most controversial CIA program hatched in the Bush era. What's more, the Democratic staff investigators, during the nearly four years the probe was underway, never once interviewed any of the CIA players involved, including me. Why not? I read that congressional "sources" (unnamed, of course) claim potential CIA witnesses would be reluctant to talk given parallel Justice Department criminal inquiries.

Really? I would have been happy to be interviewed, as would a number of my colleagues. To afford those of us on the inside — grappling with these vexing post-9/11 issues in real time — a chance to tell our side of the story, something that can't be told by simply reading years-old e-mails, no matter how many millions of them the congressional inquisitors say they read. Why didn't we get that chance? Was it because we might contradict the preferred narrative? We won't know until the report comes out and those at the center of the action have a chance to offer their say.

Bipartisan bashing

During my career, I dealt with many painful congressional probes of CIA screw-ups, from Iran-Contra to the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. When we got hits, they were both deserved and bipartisan. Capitol Hill Republicans decried the Reagan CIA on Iran-Contra, and Capitol Hill Democrats criticized the Clinton CIA for inattention to al-Qaeda in the '90s. We at the agency were given a shot at explaining our actions.

That's what makes this Senate intelligence committee probe so different — and so unfortunate — in my long experience. Absolutely, let the report come out. But its history raises doubts about whether it can be objective, authoritative or fair.

And perhaps that's why the Obama CIA and his handpicked director have balked at putting the product on view.